Love Is Patient
by Miss Meggie
Summary: Grant thinks while Jemma sleeps. **A Missing Scene from THE EXPECTATION OF JOY!**


He lies with Jemma literally on top of him, but he doesn't mind if fact he'd missed it. He sweeps the hair off the nape of her neck and runs his hand down to the base of her spine and back up in a continuous circuit.

He keeps his breathing measured and his heart rate even. Because even before the other planet Jemma was a fitful sleeper. Her mind always racing with ideas, sometimes she would literally jerk awake and reach for a pad and pen.

Lying like this had him thinking of their beginning.

-/-/-

Early on in specialist training John had sent him to demo one of FitzSimmons inventions. The sonic staff.

He'd spun the porotype over his head and planted it down just like Fitz had said to do. There had been absolutely no sonic activity and it had nearly blown his arm off.

He was so angry at first, he'd been less capable of tamping down his anger then and the urge to bite off Fitz's head had been enormous but then her saw her there.

She had been so timid barely saying two words but at the malfunction of the device it was like a damn had broken. A torrent of apology and scientific theory pouring out like a flood while she patched him up.

He'd liked her instantly, with her big brown eyes, lilting voice and quick smile he was sunk within days of meeting her. He charmed his way into a day only leveraging her guilt over his injury just the slightest.

Once he started seeing her he never stopped. Only missions and science could part them. One would always find their way to the other, like magnets they were always drawn back together and she always slept draped over him or his shoulder exhausted in the lab.

The possessive parts of him reveled in the fact that she slept best next to him. Though she always woke easy.

Now though, that's not the case she is completely immersed in dreams clutching fearfully and tightly to his shoulders. He looks out their bedroom window. The snow dusted skyline of Chicago stretching out before them. They were up high enough not to be seen in their condo was twelve floors up. Their privacy was not a concern. Whatever it was that eliminated Jemma's fear of heights was.

The issue whatever it was that drove her back into his arms, something told him it was SHIELD and that planet at fault in equal parts.

Whichever it was he was grateful for it. The intensity and desperation of the sex had only been matched once before in their near decade together.

It was after being told thanks to polycystic ovaries and endometriosis, kids would be a long shot for them even with the help of science. It had been desperately hungry and sorrowful, painfully similar to today. They'd held on to each other like a port in a storm.

He knows it's twisted to be grateful to the thing that broke her but it was sure to be the only thing that could give her back to him, and he wants her, always in every way. He'd made himself stop wanting her, needing her, but he could never quite make himself stop loving her.

Jemma wasn't the only one who'd found peace today. For the first time since John died he's stopped feeling lost. He's stopped trying to cobble together Hydra. For this moment he allows himself the comfort of being with her.

He lets himself memorize the feel of her skin under his hands, to count out the pace of respiration as her breath fell on his skin. To remember the glint of her hair in the fading light of day. He holds the hand laying over his heart, to map out the new callouses on her palms. He loves her, silently and abidingly.

She startles in her sleep. She draws a quick fearful little breath. He tightens his grip on her waist with his free hand. . "I'm here baby, relax." He turns his face to kiss her softly on the lips.

"Love is merely an unstable chain of chemicals." She murmurs in her sleep.

He laughs to himself. "Oh yeah?" she opens her eyes and gives him a dopey grin. "Be that as it may, I'll love you anyway."

"Sap." She teases her eyes still unfocused and bleary with sleep.

"Go back to sleep, baby." He commands barely above a whisper.

"Okay." She begins drift off again muttering. "You still make a lovely pillow."

He hides his triumphant smile in her hair. He'll get her back, he's sure of it; she just has to realize he's what she needs first. He can wait; John instilled patience in him if nothing else.

I own nothing.


End file.
